It's a comfortable game, but as somebody who played this game while it was still in early access, I kind of expected the final release to have more to it and also fix some of the bugs and bizarre design choices that have been here for over a year now. This game's initially really relaxing and cozy, and admittedly it makes for a great background thing to just mindlessly play while listening to podcasts and audiobooks, but I really wanted more levels like the early houses and neighborhoods, and less of the increasingly bizarre and outlandish stuff towards the end.
The developers seemed to think people wanted levels that were bigger in scale and not just, more places. I wanted more houses, backyards, hell just let me go powerwash a sidewalk. Places like the subway and the underground bathroom are way too big and genuinely become frustrating. It's frankly the biggest issue I have with PowerWash Simulator, because for a game that should be relaxing, it feels like I spent way too much time having to do literal pixel peeping and randomly spraying surfaces that should be clean. I shouldn't be confused wondering why something's not clearing, waving my mouse around wildly for that one pixel of the bar to clear up, and just suddenly having the game tell me it's now clean even though I have no clue what I missed.
Also for these being powerwashers, they sure are all terrible at actually powerwashing. I already knew from the early access builds of the game that saving your money and trying to get the Prime Vista PRO as soon as possible was basically essential for the sake of saving time and sanity, and even despite it being the endgame "strongest washer in the game," it's more than frustrating how you basically can never use any nozzle other than the yellow one, sometimes the green one, and on occasion the red one because of a surface being incredibly stubborn to clean off. The Triple Tip Nozzle was added for the final release version of the game, and very quickly I started only using that for cleaning because it was just objectively better than all the other nozzles, and there were still rare occasions where it wasn't good enough. What the hell is the point of the other powerwashers in the game when the endgame best one still struggles with cleaning?
And frankly, I really don't care for the story and as mean as it sounds, I kept wishing for an option to just straight up disable the message pop-ups on the side from the clients. Their dialogue is mostly meaningless and distracting from what's supposed to be a cozy atmosphere, and at actual worst the game dares to obliterate that atmosphere by having clients that send you actually genuinely annoying and distasteful messages, like the client for some of the carnival levels that tries to score and judge your cleaning work, or an entire subplot with a town mayor doing suspicious stuff and making you deal with the aftermath of protests against him. What the fuck?
It really sucks because as much as I'm complaining, I genuinely want more of these kind of mindless cozy games that you can play on the side while listening/watching other things. FuturLab almost had something on their hands with this, but bigger doesn't mean better and I honest to god would've been more than happy with just a game where I got to powerwash houses and their neighborhoods. When the game's simple and to the point, it just works. But as soon as it starts sending you off to the bigger places and the story starts moving in weird directions, it almost entirely veers off the deep end. I'd like to hope that either content updates or a sequel could do something more with this, or even more ideally mod support but FuturLab has always seemed very quiet and dodging around the idea even back in early access, so who knows.
The developers seemed to think people wanted levels that were bigger in scale and not just, more places. I wanted more houses, backyards, hell just let me go powerwash a sidewalk. Places like the subway and the underground bathroom are way too big and genuinely become frustrating. It's frankly the biggest issue I have with PowerWash Simulator, because for a game that should be relaxing, it feels like I spent way too much time having to do literal pixel peeping and randomly spraying surfaces that should be clean. I shouldn't be confused wondering why something's not clearing, waving my mouse around wildly for that one pixel of the bar to clear up, and just suddenly having the game tell me it's now clean even though I have no clue what I missed.
Also for these being powerwashers, they sure are all terrible at actually powerwashing. I already knew from the early access builds of the game that saving your money and trying to get the Prime Vista PRO as soon as possible was basically essential for the sake of saving time and sanity, and even despite it being the endgame "strongest washer in the game," it's more than frustrating how you basically can never use any nozzle other than the yellow one, sometimes the green one, and on occasion the red one because of a surface being incredibly stubborn to clean off. The Triple Tip Nozzle was added for the final release version of the game, and very quickly I started only using that for cleaning because it was just objectively better than all the other nozzles, and there were still rare occasions where it wasn't good enough. What the hell is the point of the other powerwashers in the game when the endgame best one still struggles with cleaning?
And frankly, I really don't care for the story and as mean as it sounds, I kept wishing for an option to just straight up disable the message pop-ups on the side from the clients. Their dialogue is mostly meaningless and distracting from what's supposed to be a cozy atmosphere, and at actual worst the game dares to obliterate that atmosphere by having clients that send you actually genuinely annoying and distasteful messages, like the client for some of the carnival levels that tries to score and judge your cleaning work, or an entire subplot with a town mayor doing suspicious stuff and making you deal with the aftermath of protests against him. What the fuck?
It really sucks because as much as I'm complaining, I genuinely want more of these kind of mindless cozy games that you can play on the side while listening/watching other things. FuturLab almost had something on their hands with this, but bigger doesn't mean better and I honest to god would've been more than happy with just a game where I got to powerwash houses and their neighborhoods. When the game's simple and to the point, it just works. But as soon as it starts sending you off to the bigger places and the story starts moving in weird directions, it almost entirely veers off the deep end. I'd like to hope that either content updates or a sequel could do something more with this, or even more ideally mod support but FuturLab has always seemed very quiet and dodging around the idea even back in early access, so who knows.
Reviewed on Dec 27, 2022